Related papers: Energy Flows in Low-Entropy Complex Systems

Nature's many varied complex systems (including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society) are islands of order within the increasingly disordered universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological or cultural evolution,…

Entropy always increases monotonically in a closed system but complexity increases at first and then decreases as equilibrium is approached. Commonsense information-related definitions for entropy and complexity demonstrate that complexity…

Complex systems throughout Nature display structures and functions that are built and maintained, at least in part, by optimal energies flowing through them--not specific, ideal values, rather ranges in energy rate density below which…

The rising complexity of our terrestrial surrounding is an empirical fact. Details of this process evaded description in terms of physics for long time attracting attention and creating myriad of ideas including non-scientific ones. In this…

Entropy is a very useful concept from physics that tries to explain how a system behaves from a point of view of the thermodynamics. However, there are two ways to explain entropy, and it depends on if we are studying a microsystem or a…

We propose an interpretation of the expansion and acceleration of the Universe from an information theoretic viewpoint. We obtain the time evolution of the configuration entropy of the mass distribution in a static Universe and show that…

Ecosystems are systems where energy flows and material cycles are maintained in an apparently stable, but non-equilibrium state through a process of self-regulation. Such a definition does just apply to biological systems, it can also apply…

Entropy is arguably one of the most powerful concepts to understand the world, from the behavior of molecules to the expansion of the universe, from how life emerges to how hybrid complex systems like cities come into being and continue…

Cosmologists wish to explain how our Universe, in all its complexity, could ever have come about. For that, we assess the number of states in our Universe now. This plays the role of entropy in thermodynamics of the Universe, and reveals…

It is well known that equilibrium in a thermodynamic system results from a competition or balance between lowering the energy and increasing the entropy, or at least the product of the temperature and entropy. This is remarkably similar to…

Complex systems with nonreciprocal interactions are often stratified into layers. Ecosystems are a prime example, where species at one trophic level grow by consuming those at another. Yet the dynamical consequences of such stratified…

In physics, I noticed subjects not explained by formulas were often not studied, like how uncontrolled growth systems changed form. Weather, businesses, societies, environments, communities, cultures, groups, relationships, lives, and…

Standard calculations suggest that the entropy of our universe is dominated by black holes, whose entropy is of order their area in Planck units, although they comprise only a tiny fraction of its total energy. Statistical entropy is the…

The basic laws of physics are simple, so why is the world complex? The theory of self-organized criticality posits that complex behavior in nature emerges from the dynamics of extended, dissipative systems that evolve through a sequence of…

According to the second law of thermodynamics, the arrow of time points to an ever increasing entropy of the Universe. However, exactly how the entropy evolves with time and what drives the growth remain largely unknown. Here, for the first…

Societal complexity may be at a historical peak. Distinct from entropy, complexity tends to rise as systems move away from order, crest at an intermediate state, and decline as entropy continues increasing. The use of a thermodynamic…

Ordinary, macroscopic systems, naturally tend to a state of maximum entropy compatible with their constraints. However, this might not hold for gravity-dominated systems since their entropy may increase without bound unless this is…

Here we deconstruct, and then in a reasoned way reconstruct, the concept of "entropy of a system," paying particular attention to where the randomness may be coming from. We start with the core concept of entropy as a COUNT associated with…

`Entropy' appears as driving force in many different evolution equations, both deterministic and stochastic, and in these equations this `entropy' also takes different forms. We show how all these examples can be understood as different…

Diversity is a fundamental feature of ecosystems, even when the concept of ecosystem is extended to sociology or economics. Diversity can be intended as the count of different items, animals, or, more generally, interactions. There are two…